Santi di Tito

By the 1570s Florentine painting had grown crowded and artificial, all elongated bodies and cold enamel color in the manner perfected by Bronzino. Santi di Tito, who had trained under Bronzino himself, set out in the other direction. He went back to drawing from life and built his altarpieces around clear space, steady light, and figures that stand and move like real people.

You can see the change in his Resurrection of about 1574 for the church of Santa Croce in Florence, a large scene that still reads at a glance. He painted a Supper at Emmaus for the same church soon after.

Santi belonged to the founding generation of the Accademia del Disegno, the Florentine academy of drawing set up in 1563, and he trained a broad workshop of pupils who carried his plainer manner into the next century. He worked in Florence almost his whole life and died there in 1603.